eThere was a moment in the beginning when ZDF Talk could really surprise. SPD politician Sigmar Gabriel, a former secretary of state and honorary president of Atlantic Bridge, said a visit to West Virginia last year “disproved prejudices”. with Marcus Lanz.
Gabriel wanted to know what Democratic voters become once they become Trump voters. He “met ordinary, well-educated people”. Gabriel said that the common denominator between them is “hate of elites.” Both Barack Obama and Trump were eligible for these people. “They were not crazy or violent criminals in oxen. They were ordinary people.”
As independent historian and journalist Annika Bruckschmidt (“Zeit Online”, “Tagesspiegel,” ZDF) stated shortly before the first anniversary of the storm at the Capitol, on January 6th, people in Washington were not only on the streets, but in many can Watching TV Pictures: “There were people who could fly to Washington for a day, pay hotel fare, and the doctors were there.”
Ordinary people, rich people, not crazy
The third guest on the tour, US reporter Johannes Hanno of ZDF, spoke about the conscious formation of identity by interested parties, and the conscious use of narratives of ethnic and religious identity found not only with the right, but also with the left.
Ordinary people, rich people, not crazy people. At the same time, the committee agreed that supporters of Donald Trump – or optionally American Republicans – were endangering democracy.
At times one had the impression that 2024 would be about choosing between authoritarianism and democracy, as one viewer commented on the second screen of social media during the broadcast.
Attack on investor Thiel and Silicon Valley
The talk show wasn’t about party platforms, it was about whether it was primarily material, religious, or identity-related reasons that define the cross on the ballot in the United States. And with Trump voters, of course, who influences them?
Once the “hate of elites” became the consensus, the group of SPD and three journalists agreed with Lanz on an elite that could be attacked without contradiction: the financial and technology elite in silicon. Valley, which now wields political influence.
And of course it’s fleshed out as with every good enemy image: Peter Thiel, a PayPal and Facebook investor from the start, is now the man who’s been the reproach in Silicon Valley. The interviewees mentioned his name several times and spoke of the detrimental impact of the Frankfurt native on American democracy.
How frightening the influence of big corporations is
Hano began the ZDF reporter: “There is a small group of super-rich Americans who have their own idea of what America should look like, and ideally dismantle the state, that is, the destruction of the administrative state.” This group does not want the police, does the FBI, do not pay taxes, but determine.
“They’re people like Peter Thiel,” Hanno says. Campaign finance for senators dependent on Trump. It’s “how scary the influence of big corporations is.”
Sigmar Gabriel had to pause for a while: “There are no one-dimensional explanations.” A few sentences later, the SPD man was also in Silicon Valley. “Next is technology companies want to evade political regulation.”
The allegations remained unchallenged with Lanz
Starting with an Apple Watch flashing on his arm, the Social Democrat spoke of Thiel & Co’s desire for an island in the sea where technology could be developed without control, about neoliberal ideology “to the extreme,” as he put it: “The state, stay out, politics, stay outside of it—and if that doesn’t work, we’ll destroy the nation. If one way doesn’t work, we’ll go the other. That’s what they’re doing there.”
“The other way is not called democracy”: Brockschmidt also agreed to attack tech investors and Trump advisers.
Peter Thiel and an elite in Silicon Valley wanted to destroy the nation and abolish democracy. The allegations did not contradict.
Worrying speculation by the former foreign minister
Since announcer Lanz was not in a rowdy mood that evening, the guests became more and more conspicuous. The problem, Gabriel said, is that Trump supporters have learned from the failed attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They will now “create the conditions in which there can be no confirmation of a Democratic president in Congress and the Senate.”
The electoral men and women who decide to win in the American electoral system are determined by the regional parliaments. “If you send there those who will anyway declare that a Democrat has a majority, and the election is rigged, then you get a situation where the Democrat might win again in numbers next time, but the voters and women vote differently.”
He believes that this is what Trump supporters were aiming for in the 2022 congressional elections. It is about “a far-reaching impact by 2024”, the composition of those who decide: whether the elections will be accepted or not.
In the discussion about deliberate redistricting and changing voter registration rules, Gabriel also explained how Atlantic Bridge was trying to interfere in the United States. She works with organizations that mobilize Latinos and “coloreds” for inclusion on the electoral roll.
What is left of this program? A former secretary of state has not spoken diplomatically cautiously about the actors in the transatlantic ally. Together with journalists on the set that appeared unusual – but unanimously expected on this topic – speculated about a coup d’état in the United States, which will be prepared this year. In addition, warnings against a very powerful technological elite and advice from Germany for a better democracy.
Twitter fan. Beer specialist. Entrepreneur. General pop culture nerd. Music trailblazer. Problem solver. Bacon evangelist. Foodaholic.